This comes as companies are shifting focus to digital marketing, and declaring it a mainstream strategy.

Digital marketing and commerce has been labelled as a top priority for marketers, according to a survey by Gartner.

98 per cent of marketers polled believe that online marketing is merging with offline marketing.

Yvonne Genovese, group vice president at Gartner, said: “There is little doubt that digital marketing is now mainstream.

“Marketers no longer make a clear distinction between offline and online marketing disciplines. As customers opt for digitally led experiences, digital marketing stops being a discrete discipline and instead becomes the context for all marketing.

“Digital marketing is now marketing in a digital world.”

Other findings of the study include that the young families category was 24 per cent more likely to respond to direct mail by going online to make further inquiries.

Furthermore, fledglings were likely to increasingly want more innovative, creative mailings such as use of 3D features and augmented reality.